James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Imaginative Realism

Dinotopia: The World Beneath

"A ravishing, action-packed adventure." —Smithsonian. Now with 32 extra behind-the-scenes pages. Signed by the author/illustrator

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara

160 pages, fully illustrated in color. Written and illustrated by James Gurney. Signed by the author

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Writing GurneyJourney takes dozens of hours each month. If you get as much out of this blog as you get from a cup of coffee or a nice meal out, please consider contributing to my citizen journalism in the visual arts.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

7 comments:

Not many of them are good at it. I did portraits at Opryland my last summer of High School. Most miserable six weeks of my life.

You would not be-LIEVE how many people with serious facial deformities sit for those things. There is no graceful way to ask, "would you like this with the giant hairy mole above your eye, or without?"

I was terrible at it, too. I wasn't the worst; that was my main consolation. Only one of us was much good, and she was impressive -- though her portraits looked more like each other than the client.

Also, I sat in the Dixieland section. After a week, I worked out that hearing The Saints Go Marching In was probably going to be my cue to go rogue and start killing people.

Joe Bluhm is a master caricature artist, though he's not always as kind to his clients as they would like him to be.

He actually has a book out through Brandstudio Press (I think?) called Rejects, which is full of nothing but rejected caricature drawings that the people didn't want (mostly on accounts of him drawing them so unflattering!) Needless to say, he likes to really push unique facial traits on people rather than de-emphasize them.

I think I only got one caricature done my whole life, and it was done by a robot. Way back in the early 90's, Epcot in Orlando had a robot that was stationed that drew portraits of people. Of course, when you think about it, it probably wasn't much different from doing something like applying a filter on a photo, but it was always fun to watch the robot arm sweep across the page with the pen and start to hatch out a portrait.

I second David's recommendation to check out Brian Oakes's blog. He shows photos of his subjects next to his caricatures so you can see what he was working with. He doesn't repeat himself or use a formula; he really picks up on the essence of a face. Awesome stuff, Brian!

Another caricaturist who you should check out is Mark Heng, a frequent commentator on this blog.